Reboots, Reimaginings, Live Action Adaptations & Sequels

Back in the 80s, Film Twitter (notwithstanding Twitter's lack of existence) used to bemoan the infantilisation of movies. After all, the 70s had given us the first two Godfather movies, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation and those were just the work of one director. The 80s gave us, well, Mac & Me. I'm being facetious, of course - the 80s also has some absolutely terrific cinema. In the 90s however, the then equivalent of Film Twitter started to bemoan the preponderance of TV adaptations, some of which have probably sunk back into the ether; The Fugitive, The Flintstones, Maverick, Mission: Impossible & The Brady Bunch Movie are just a few off the top of my head.

Since then, everyone's noticed that reboots and sequels seem to be making up an increasing proportion of new movies released every year. Last year saw the introduction of the third iteration of Spider-Man in less than a decade. While Indiana Jones and Die Hard have been sequelised to the point that new instalments are being dreaded rather than anticipated. Some series are going strong: James Bond - I know, I would say that; Mission: Impossible - although its financial success is unarguable, I've personally found the last couple of movies pretty creatively bereft. Others seem to keep going until audience fatigue kicks in (yup, Pirates of the Caribbean, I'm looking at you). And this trend has been crossed with the rise of the comic book movie - these may tail off at some point, but there seems to be no sign of it happening soon.

What studios tend to refer to as new IP (intellectual property - the foundation for a movie, which used to be a script, a novel, a memoir, but can now be a game, a previous movie or even a theme park ride) has become rarer and rarer. Studios have also shown an increased preference for a movie slate (the year's offerings) consisting of a smaller number of would-be blockbusters than the wider, more varied blend of old, leading to many of the studios actually shutting down their specialist/ semi-independent divisions. Meanwhile, huge increases in global audiences and screen counts mean that China is expected to become the largest single movie market in the world at some point in the next three years and the 'rest of the world' is regarded as even more important than the once-dominant US market.

This has led to simpler/ more simplistic movies than we used to see, with less dialogue (e.g. action movies), as these can then play internationally much more easily than films used to. And although in some instances casting has become more diverse (see how the Fast & Furious films have developed over time) other movies have been accused of cultural appropriation (see Ghost in the Shell), whitewashing (er, Ghost in the Shell again) and pandering (see Looper among others).

What does this mean for what we're seeing now and going to be seeing? If you'd asked anyone fifteen years ago what the word 'reboot' meant in a cinematic context or indeed what the words 'sidequel' or 'reimagining' meant at all, you'd have been met with a blank face. If you'd asked anyone about making a live action adaptation of Beauty & The Beast or The Lion King, you would have been told that there's nothing wrong with the animated originals (for the record: there isn't).

If these trends proliferate and we keep rewarding these movies with our money, this situation will just carry on. The creativity we'll see in movies will be restricted to how they're marketed to us, promising us that a reimagining isn't the same as a reboot, that this time will be different and that this time the movie really will satisfy.

A lot of my needs for narrative cinema are already being satisfied by great novels and the Golden Age of Television. And in a year where US summer box office takings are down for the first time in a long time, it seems I'm not the only one. Martin Scorsese's next movie is being funded by and will premiere on Netflix. Francis Ford Coppola has talked about how cinema as a form appears to have migrated to other forms. The only way to get the movies you want is to vote at the box office and/ or on your television. After all, there's no fate but what we make. Choose wisely!

Why I Love: Film Posters

I recently realised - the reason for which will be the subject of a separate post - that the highest form of non-narrative art as far as I'm concerned, is a movie poster. Sure, I've been to various galleries and seen and enjoyed various sculptures and paintings. But movie posters? That hits my spot. And in the same way that my growing up slightly before the web meant that my understanding of media predates the internet revolution a little (something I'm very grateful for), I'm also glad that I grew up with painted movie posters, before the prevalence of photo montages and Photoshop overtook everything else. The reason for this is that there's just something about painted posters that provides a sense of heightened reality or fantasy that a touched up set of photos just can't quite compete with (don't even get me started on so-called motion posters) - although having said that, a side order of childhood nostalgia probably has a part to play as well.

Everyone knows Drew Struzan's fantastic work for the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Back to the Future movies (among many, many others!) which still looks as great as it did on the movies' original releases, but there are also numerous other well known poster artists who've delivered iconic work. My own Bond fandom means that Bond posters are, of course, my absolute favourites and I recently found that a huge chunk of my favourite posters were all designed by the same artist: Brian Bysouth.

Bysouth plays an interesting role in Bond history, as apart from images like the poster above, he was also involved in the first photo montage the Bond series ever used (the UK poster for Licence to Kill - a poster I like a lot, although sadly, he doesn't) while his last contribution to the series was the main UK poster for The World is Not Enough, which is probably one of the better efforts from that particular period. Bond posters have a history of committing to giving the audience a rollicking ride with action & excitement coming out of your ears and despite differences in individual movies and posters, for the most part, I'd argue both that that's what you get and that the side order of unnaturally forced perspective is just a bonus.

Nowadays, the proliferation of media means that we all have a strong sense of whether or not we're interested in seeing a movie long before we see the poster. All the poster tends to do is confirm what we're thinking, increase a movie's awareness with an arresting image or - very rarely - make us think again (sometimes in favour, sometimes against?!). But back in the olden/ golden days, posters were sometimes one of the few ways we could find out about a movie and what might possibly be in store.

I have a strong preference for narrative art (movies, novels, music) over other forms. And it only recently occurred to me that many movies never quite deliver against what the poster suggests. So despite these issues, why do I love static movie posters so much? Ultimately, any great poster is a promise. And even if the film subsequently lets its audience down, who doesn't enjoy the excitement of the possibilities?

Digital Cinema Re-Releases

In I think the penultimate chapter of Mark Cousins' otherwise excellent thirteen part documentary 'The Story of Film: An Odyssey', the author became enamoured with the word 'digital' and started liberally applying it pretty much everywhere. And I became really, really confused (surely the opposite of the intended result?). CG effects have really taken off in the last 30 years, but computers themselves have been used in/ for effects for even longer than that. Shooting digitally has only become commonplace in the last five years or so. Laserdiscs and DVDs both date from the 90s. And digital projection has only really been around for the last decade. Unless I'm missing something, the links between many of those actual, individual technologies is tenuous at best - the only common thing I can think of is, um, movies.

Although different aspects of this (as a whole) technological revolution are of course other blog posts, this one - almost, but not quite contradicting what I wrote above - is about a weird result from the confluence between home video and digital projection and that would be blu-ray. A little like the way longstanding TV sets like 'Eastenders' (as opposed to longstanding TV sets such as the one probably in your living room) had to be spruced up for HD owing to the broadcast quality showing up previously undetectable flaws, blu-ray releases have necessitated a lot of film restoration. One of the best examples of this is the canon of 22 Bond movies (yes I know that the producers have obtained the rights to 'Never Say Never Again' and the first film adaptation of 'Casino Royale', but let's be honest: they're always going to be treated like unwanted stepchildren and no, I wasn't looking for an excuse to mention Bond films). Home video sets of the series through the years have sold truckloads in those we-didn't-know-what-to-get-you-for-Christmas-but-you-love-Bond-movies-right?/ another-version?-I-have-to-have-it! kinds of way and the producers and studio make quite a lot from the back catalogue every year as a result. As a result, the advent of blu-ray led to the producers getting the back catalogue restored in very, very high-def (8k for technical geeks) by the outfit formerly known as Lowry Digital. This would ensure not only pristine blu-ray releases, but also awesome, whatever-comes-next releases too, whether that be another disc format, HD home streaming or even-more-'H'D home streaming. I'm leaving the subject of blu-ray transfers for another post, but - awesome side effect alert! - the producers actually ended up with digital prints that weren't just good enough for cinema release, but which probably look a whole lot better than any original release. As a result of this, the producers were able to do a limited series of cinema re-releases for some of the most popular Bond movies.

The Bond folks weren't the only ones who cottoned on to this of course and all kinds of movies are now getting short cinema re-releases. I'm saving the subject of 3D re-releasing for another post, but regular 2D re-releases include 'Jurassic Park', 'John Carpenter's The Thing', 'Ghostbusters', 'Back To The Future' (which was strangely UK-only) & 'Scarface'. I came thisclose to leaving 'Blade Runner' off the list, since it was the newly minted Ultimate Edition rather than the original theatrical cut, but since Ridley Scott was merely finishing it off rather than fundamentally changing it, it would be wrong to omit it.

So what did I learn apart from reiterating that the experience of watching in a film in a movie theatre (annoying patrons aside) really is nothing like watching it at home, no matter how good your home cinema set-up is? 'Scarface' is not actually a brilliant movie, but is still rollicking good entertainment. 'The Thing' is ruddy terrifying; you'd think a large screen and cleaned up picture might expose weaknesses in Rob Bottin's creature designs, but this didn't turn out to be the case at all. 'Blade Runner' is even more immersing than watching it at home; if you're lucky enough to have a well-designed auditorium, the opening sequence makes you feel like you're actually floating and you really get how cleverly the physical effects on the cityscape were designed to sell you that illusion and this film doesn't let up at all - it's just sheer genius throughout. 'Jurassic Park' hasn't aged well at all; while I loved the film on its original release and watched the video over and over again, seeing at the cinema with the benefit of age (but maybe not so much wisdom) made it feel like a series of not-that-well-strung-together set pieces and ultimately rather hollow.

'Back To The Future' and 'The Lion King' however - which we chose to watch in 2D - were particularly poignant. I was distracted by a slight, continuous noise during the wildebeest stampede in the latter, which of course ends up Simba's realisation that Mufasa has died; I'd figured that maybe one of the speakers was distorting from all the bass. Just as he crawls under his dad's paw, in absolute silence, the noise suddenly amplified into a now clearly identifiable child's wailing, who then screamed "Mummy! Make it stop!". It was simultaneously funny and incredibly moving, as I realised that in twenty or thirty years time that child would talk about this as a seminal moment, the same way people of my generation talk about feeling devastated when Bambi's mum got shot and that I'd been there to witness it; a seventeen year old movie reducing a new generation to tears. Although I cried plenty of times myself, but don't tell anyone.

'Back To The Future' was just as fun, albeit a slightly different experience. The movie itself hasn't dated a jot. It's just as endlessly quotable as ever. The actors all just get it and do their utmost to invest everything in their characters, all of whom are perfectly realised. The direction never flags, the script is just a sheer joy. The score felt vibrant and the whole film just came alive. The cinema was also full of families, which is something I usually dread thanks to parents who often don't give a monkey's what their kids are doing or what disruption they're wreaking on anyone else. And they were all absolutely silent. Not a peep. And I realised that when the movie really is that good - admittedly a rarity - that audiences will of course behave themselves. Two things occurred to me: the first was how cool it had been to watch the movie with other people who'd grown up with it and who were now presumably recreating that experience with their own children. The second was about the movie itself. 'Back To The Future' was of course made for family audiences, but it has charm, characters and edge. Would anyone make a movie with the line "Great Scott! The Libyans!" now? I don't think so. Would anyone make a film now where the (er) teenage hero's best friend is the crazy, old, single guy who lives as a recluse on the other side of town? That would be 'no'. Is anyone going to talk with reverence and love for any of the Transformers movies in quarter of a century's time the way that people like me can talk about 'Back To The Future' now (yes, it'll be twenty-seven this year). That would also be 'no'. I shouldn't pick on Transformers movies (the problem is that it's just too much fun) and I actually don't have to: there's plenty of vacuous, utterly disposable entertainment out there. Pick a big, recent popcorn movie or series (e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean) and ask yourselves if anyone's going to love them in twenty-five years. Is anyone actually going to remember them in twenty-five years? Just because something's made for a mainstream audience or a family audience doesn't mean that it can skimp on fun, exuberance, entertainment value, great characterisation or any of the other hallmarks of great movies. The second thing I learnt from seeing 'Back To The Future' at the cinema was that the greatest gift of digital cinema re-releases is that we can find those qualities in mainstream films at the cinema again, albeit in movies that we already know and love.

Skyfall

The consensus seems to be that Quantum of Solace was a relatively poor sequel to a modern classic and although I wouldn't really argue with that take on Casino Royale, I think the follow-up's a little unfairly maligned. Casino Royale's certainly my favourite Bond movie by a long shot, but it's by no means perfect: the whole stock market manipulation MacGuffin is still lost on me after 20+ viewings,  the Prague-for-Miami location work, well, doesn't and neither does the Michael Mann-inspired cinematography in the airport action sequence. We can talk about the good bits some other time. Quantum of Solace meanwhile isn't given enough credit for the extraordinary amount of location work (probably the best presented locations of the series), ace production & costume design and some of the best cinematography the series has ever seen. [I have to admit that I didn't quite expect this post to resemble '"Friends, Romans, Countrymen" to quite the extent to which it's turning out, but that's classic for a reason, right?] The key issue with the sequel seemed to be its action sequences; both their sheer amount in the finished movie as well as their editing came in for criticism and it was suggested more than once that Bond must have felt Bourne nipping at his heels to have stolen his second unit director.

I personally love the sequel. Not as much as its immediate predecessor and admittedly at least partially out of the contractual obligations of fandom, but I love it nonetheless. And one of the main  reasons I love it is because it does feel so dissimilar. It must be so tempting to trot out only slight variations on things that work over and over again - particularly in something so formulaic as a Bond movie - that as a member of the audience I appreciate creatively interesting failures that much more. And whereas Casino Royale was almost the quintessential Bond movie, Quantum of Solace really was just so different.

So key cast & crew have been announced for Skyfall and the list of names suggests that the usual post-mortem has thrown up some interesting lessons for the producers. The big news is of course Sam Mendes, without doubt the most prestigious director ever to have taken the reigns of a Bond movie and one with whom Daniel Craig already has experience, thanks to the excellent adaptation of Road to Perdition. But with him seems to have arrived an absolutely killer cast: Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes & Albert Finney are much bigger names than Bond films can usually attract and even smaller names (Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw & Helen McCrory) are way more accomplished actors than is typical. Some serious money's also been spent on the script again. After the producers' annoyance at Paul Haggis over the latter's involvement in the writers' strike (contributing to uncredited, on-set rewrites as well as the reduction in the drama to action ratio) other big names were engaged: Peter Morgan apparently did a little work on top of the basic Purvis & Wade draft, but John Logan of The Aviator & Gladiator renown has since completed it. The other really big creative name is legend Roger Deakins as director of photography; probably best known for his longstanding work with the Coen Brothers, he's also filmed modern classics like Revolutionary Road & The Reader.

Quantum of Solace's production designer's been retained, but the other key names (special effects supervisor, stunt co-ordinator, second-unit director and editor) all seem to be returning from Casino Royale. Contrary to moronic UK tabloid suggestions of no action, these names actually suggest that Skyfall will feature a return to the more tightly integrated blend of action and drama of that movie, which is reinforced by the drop in budget from $250m (!) to $200m (action's expensive, drama's relatively cheap). And - assuming I've got the girls the right way around! - a French Bond girl is of course only the icing on the cake.

The marketing onslaught is of course going to be relentless for the 50th anniversary movie and - for this fan at least - ruddy expensive. The good news is that the talent involved so far strongly suggests that the film's going to be worth it.

Not Your Regular Bond Fan

- Oh! You're into [Star Trek/ James Bond/ Dr Who/ thinking with your brain  *delete as appropriate]? You should really talk to [Insert name here]. (S)he's really into [Star Trek/ James Bond/ Dr Who/ having thoughts  *delete as appropriate] as well!

This line will be instantly familiar to anyone who has any geek tendencies whatsoever. You're artificially introduced to this person that you're alleged to have something in common with, following which you end up doing this weird kind of mating ritual where you verbally circle each other, trying to figure out what level of geek the other is to see if you have any kind of connection at all. Not that the non-geeks ever seem to understand that there might in fact not actually be any.

I've been a Bond fan since I was very small. I actually still remember my mum taking me to the cinema when I was five to watch 'The Spy Who Loved Me' on a Monday night at a cinema (now a pool hall) a tube stop away from their house in London. I must have had some serious pester power, as my folks really didn't have much money when we were younger so this turn of events was pretty much unprecedented. Fandom can have many reasons; not everyone affected always knows why they've been blessed with whatever their particular pleasure is, even if the effects are often similar. I suspect that I became a Bond fan because I enjoyed the escapism. But that's not the reason I'm still a fan today. This may or may not be something I have any control over, but it feels like the latter. For me now, being a Bond fan is a thread that runs through my life. The first time I see a Bond movie relates to every other first time I saw a Bond movie, all of which I can of course remember in pretty good detail. Being a fan is about a completely irrational passion. Like a mad crush you can't or just plain won't grow out of. Being a fan is about knowing in as-close-to-an-objective-opinion-as-you-can-muster that a film isn't very or sometimes even any good, but loving it anyway.

If nerds truly rules the world, as I've read two or three times in the last couple of days, then surely the world can respect us enough to recognise that we're all different. Geekdom doesn't just come in levels, it actually comes in flavours. You wouldn't just say "You'd like X, he's gay too!" would you? Although actually someone would, as I'm embarrassed to admit that I was once on the receiving end of that particular line. For the record, I'm into Bond movies way more than I'm into the novels (my favourite of which wasn't even written by Ian Fleming - Colonel Sun was actually by Kingsley Amis).

Star Trek fans are a lot of fun, as are Whovians. And both sets always seem to be into a lot of other things too. Star Wars fans seem to take it all a bit more seriously even though (in my very limited experience) they don't actually seem to have quite as much fun with it. But Bond fans? I have to admit that I often don't like the Bond fans I meet. A few have been absolutely wonderful. But most of them are quite dull and occasionally slightly unhinged men. And they nearly always seem to be men. Well apart from my sister, but you get the general drift. I suspect that many of them secretly really think they either are or just want to be James Bond. I mean, like, REALLY.

I was once introduced to to an alleged Bond fan who was wearing £1100 of watch as per the latest Bond movie, but who didn't own any of the films on DVD and who loved "which was the one with that huge volcano?". How could my heart not sink? I mentioned that I'd blagged my way into a Goldeneye press screening thanks to being such a fan, but that I just didn't like it. Although after a few weeks had passed, I had gone to see it at the cinema again. Another twelve times. Did I mention that I'm not your regular Bond fan?

I guess that this probably won't be the last time I write about being slightly obsessed with Bond movies. In which case, *arches eyebrow* James Bond will return.